Then he looked into the spirit's eyes. They were brown and nothing noteworthy until he saw, like the flashes of lightning deep within a cloud, a blaze of red. And then he remembered where he had seen the teen's face before. It was in a memory that Dumbledore had shared with him several years ago.

Perhaps he wouldn't die from his wounds after all.

~H*P~

Harry sat on the cold stone floor of the classroom staring at the wall. His professor had asked him not to watch, and Harry had respected that, albeit grudgingly. Unfortunately, looking away didn't stop him from hearing everything Snape said. At least there had been no more screaming, but that didn't mean the situation wasn't awkward. It felt rather like he was eavesdropping on a phone call, or perhaps a confession before a priest. There were long periods of silence followed by what Harry believed to be Snape's attempts to explain his actions. Explain, he noted, never excuse. And never did he plead for forgiveness. Altogether, Harry was impressed.

It wasn't that Snape struck him as a man who would beg and plead for his life—and the professor had said more than once that he expected to be dead by the end of this night—but wasn't it natural for people to attempt to put their behavior into a positive light? True, Harry could only hear half of the conversation, and Snape's characteristic terseness left him a little short on details, but it sounded as though the man fully accepted whatever was being accused of. Introspection was not Harry's strong suit, he knew, but for a moment he wondered how things might have been different if he had been so accepting of his own failings in the past. Would it have improved matters to have fessed up and accepted the consequences without a fuss? No, probably not he concluded. It likely would have made Snape even more angry with him had he shown up to an Occlumency lesson and said, "No, Professor, I haven't been practicing clearing my mind because I don't understand how to practice or what it means to clear my mind, and anyway I have a lot of homework. It is my O.W.L. year after all."

These musings could only occupy his mind for so long, however. Harry pictured Snape still kneeling in the center of the circle, a few smears of blood on the ground and more dripping down the man's fingers from the cuts on his forearms. Worse still, he didn't have to look over his shoulder to know that Snape was growing weaker by the minute; he could hear as much in the man's voice. The professor's comments about his imminent death reinforced what Harry had gathered from Snape's tortured screaming earlier; rather than having robbed Harry of his chance for absolution, Snape had saved him from something horrific. It was unconscionable, therefore, for Harry to simply sit and listen to his professor's demise, no matter how much he hated the man. He had to try something.

The book!

He couldn't remember any notations in the margin of the book that talked about how to end the ritual prematurely, but admittedly he hadn't been looking for them. It was possible he had overlooked them focused as he was on the complexities of the ritual itself. Hoping he could avoid drawing Snape's attention and ire, Harry edged back from the wall towards the runic circle and the book that lay near it. It would have been easier if he could have turned around, but he had been asked not to watch and so he would not look…not until he could do something more than look, anyway. After a minute, he found the book and scrambled with it back to where he had been sitting.

Over the last few weeks, Harry had read over the ritual so many times that the book practically opened on its own to the proper page. As he recalled, the scrawled notes were minutely detailed on the procedure of the ritual itself, but there was little information beyond that, and Harry was rapidly coming to the conclusion that there was nothing here that would allow him to stop the ritual without killing the processor in the process.

If Hermione thought Harry had a "saving people thing" when he wanted to rescue Sirius, he wondered what she would call his current efforts on behalf of Snape. Odd, really, how desperate he was to save a man who had done so much to make his time at Hogwarts miserable. Snape was a bully who was unafraid to abuse his power as an instructor to humiliate his students, and Harry had caught more than his share of undeserved humiliation through the years. The pensive incident and learning that Snape had just cause to revile the Potter name had given Harry some insight into his professor's actions, but it never really excused them. If Ron were here, he could just imagine him saying that Snape was simply getting what was coming to him and that Harry should stop worrying so much. But Harry wasn't Ron. He might not like Snape, but neither did he wish the man dead.

Professor Snape's voice interrupted his musings. Harry tilted his head, listening as the potions master explained how he had been attempting to devise a potion to reverse the nerve damage caused by the Cruciatus Curse when he had accidentally discovered a potion that incapacitated a person's somatic motor neurons. Harry only understood about half of what he was saying, but gathered that the potion had been turned over to Voldemort recently at Dumbledore's suggestion because he wanted the megalomaniac's trust. It was disgusting, handing weapons to the man who was terrorizing all of wizarding Britain and (although they didn't know it) a good part of muggle Britain as well.

Spy, Harry reminded himself. Snape was a spy. He might have doubted before, but he couldn't after tonight. No Death Eater would have willingly sacrificed his own life for Harry's when there were no witnesses there who would expect such an act. It would not have been difficult to wait a few seconds until Harry had cast the circle and then run to Dumbledore claiming that he had been too late to prevent it.

Shaking his head, Harry refocused on the text, squinting in confusion when he spotted something unfamiliar in the ritual he had nearly memorized. Only then did he realize that he had flipped past the pages detailing the Ritual of Atonement. His eyes darted back up to where a title might reasonably be but all he saw were the words "for enemies" scrawled above the instructions. Thinking back to when he had first perused the book he had a vague memory of having glanced at this page, but at the time he had been much more interested in the atonement ritual than anything geared towards revenge.

Returning to the ritual itself, he scrutinized the procedure and the notations that accompanied the few differences between this and the Ritual of Atonement. As he read, a knot formed in the pit of his stomach, small at first, but soon Harry was fighting the urge to be sick. By about halfway through Harry realized that what he was reading wasn't just based on the Ritual of Atonement, it was the Ritual of Atonement cast by one person as a trap for another. The alterations all seemed to center on making it so the caster could be inside the circle without being the target of the spell.

The Half-Blood Prince had known! He had known the Ritual of Atonement was a horrific rite and had adapted it so that he could trap an enemy and watch them suffer. Harry twisted violently away from the book because there was no stopping the bile that was rising in his throat after that thought. He hadn't eaten much at dinner, so it wasn't long before his stomach was empty, though it cramped twice more after that bringing up nothing but a thin stream of acid. At last he felt recovered enough to turn back, although he wished he had his wand to vanish the puddle of sick behind him.

This was a good thing, he assured himself, talking careful, deep breaths. Not that he had failed to realize that his grand plan for this evening apparently amounted to little more than a fancy magical form of suicide; that was entirely bad. So was the fact that he had been beginning to idolize the previous owner of this textbook despite Hermione's warnings. The Half-Blood Prince had to have been fairly Dark to have modified an atonement ritual (even though it had a tragic conclusion, it was at least cast by choice) into a vicious, deadly trap. A trap the Prince could then observe in minute detail. No, what was good was there was every chance that the Half-Blood Prince's modifications might help Harry in devising his own similar alterations. If he could only divine meaning from what had changed and what had not, he might be able to find a way to stop the ceremony. Or intervene. Something!

Over the last two years, Hermione had helped him improve his Latin, but it was nowhere near good enough for him to be sure about what he was attempting. However, after some working out he had something he thought had decent odds at working. He stood and faced the circle, stepping forward until he was only about half a meter behind Snape, who was either worse off than he looked or completely absorbed by the proceedings as he had failed to notice Harry's movement.

He took a deep breath and focused There was a chance this would backfire and kill him or Snape, or possibly both of them, but Harry had been the cause of enough deaths and he would not sit idly by now. Of course, his wand was in the center of the circle, so he might achieve nothing at all. But he had once cast Lumos when his wand was nearby and not in his hand and that had worked. He tried to concentrate the way he needed to for casting spells nonverbally in the hopes that would help.

Snape was speaking again, and Harry took that opportunity to begin the incantation. He really didn't want his professor to try to stop him. Taking great care over his pronunciation he spoke the incantation that he hoped translated as "may the circle that I have cast allow me entrance to observe."

He felt a pulse of magic as he finished the incantation. Dear Merlin, he hoped that pulse meant the spell had worked; he had no wish to repeat the incident earlier when the circle had thrown him into the wall. With some hesitation, he stepped across the chalked boundary of the circle and had to suppress a gasp at the sight that shimmered into existence. Harry was standing on the edge of a crowd of…what, exactly? They weren't ghosts, that was for sure. In fact, they looked quite normal except that they gave the impression that they lacked real substance.

"I can't even imagine." That short phrase, spoken by a voice familiar despite his having heard it last over a year and a half ago, drew Harry's attention to the two figures standing in front of Snape with a set of gigantic scales behind them.

"Dad." It escaped without conscious thought, but although he felt his lips form the word the little sound that escaped him was overpowered by a sudden intake of breath by Snape.

It was then that Harry tore his eyes away from his father's form and recognized the man next to him. Unlike the others, this…spirit, phantom, possibly specter?…was blurred, almost as though two people were occupying the same space, but one of those two was a face he would never forget. It was the sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle who had inhabited the diary and had nearly killed Ginny in his second year.

"Bollocks." That wasn't a whisper, and Harry felt the weight of the stares as all attention turned towards him.

The crowd stirred like a hive of angry bees, and several voices rose above the general noise of angry muttering.

"What in Merlin's name?"

"How did he get inside the circle?"

"Potter, what have you done?" That was Snape, and he did not sound tired at all. In fact, he sounded livid.

Before Harry could formulate an explanation, one of the specters advanced on him shouting.

"Begone! This is a court of Death, the living have no voice here."

A bolt of sickly yellow light shot from the specter's outstretched hand at Harry. Before he could marshal his wits to dodge it, another specter darted in between him and his aggressor, deflecting the spell. A feminine voice began arguing with his attacker, but Harry understood none of it over the rushing in his ears, for in front of him stood the man whose death had inspired him to attempt the ritual in the first place.

"Sirius. Oh, Sirius, I'm so sorry, I never meant…" he choked on the words, blinking back the tears that blurred his view of his godfather's face.

Sirius placed an insubstantial hand on Harry's shoulder. It wasn't cold like a ghost's hand would be. It was…nothing. No weight, no warmth, nothing; just another reminder that his godfather could no longer be in his life. "I know, kid. You've got to stop blaming yourself, but now is really not the best time for this conversation," Sirius replied. His words were reinforced by the cold, high voice that interrupted them.

"This is a touching scene, is it not? Harry Potter reunited with those he has lost during his attempt to rescue his professor."

Voldemort liked attention, Harry knew, and so he grit his teeth, deliberately ignored the taunt, and turned towards his father. "If the living have no voice, why is he here?"

"He's not dead?"

Harry opened his mouth to reply, but Snape beat him to it. "Though many would wish otherwise, the Dark Lord is very much alive."

That brought gasps from everyone, Harry saw, his father and Sirius included. Had no one here realized they were looking at Voldemort except himself and Snape?

"Yes, that I am, my traitorous servant. Despite this child's supposed victories, I live and thrive."

"If you are not dead…not wholly dead…" James began, but was cut off.

"I killed you once, I will not hesitate to do so again," Voldemort snarled. He extended his hand and vicious red light shot from his fingertips.

James waved the spell aside and answered with one of his own.

Clearly wands were not necessary for the dead and Harry watched in awe as his father dueled with the wizard who had killed him. Though Voldemort's blurry outline made it hard to focus directly on him, Harry saw the instant that the Dark wizard resorted to the killing curse. Harry shouted a warning to his father, but it was unnecessary as James waved that spell away like he had all the others.

"I am the judge here, and your magic cannot triumph against me," he said, casting a spell that knocked Voldemort back several steps though it did not seem to cause any real harm.

"Very well," came the reply. Voldemort then raised his hands above his head and brought them down with a spectacular clap and a wash of magic. Harry did not know how he had done it, but all at once the other specters were pushed out of the circle and confined behind a magical barrier. A second spell silenced the shouting, leaving Voldemort, Snape and Harry in near silence.

"I shall deal with you later," Voldemort said with a dismissive wave of his pale hand in the direction of the crowd. "Now, traitor, you have asked for atonement from those you have wronged. What price is enough for betraying your master?"

Harry watched, fear pulsing through his veins like ice. He had the feeling that whatever had been done to Snape to have elicited those horrible screams earlier would soon be inflicted on his professor and himself in even greater measure. But years of Harry Hunting had led to ingrained habit. Wise or not, when faced with someone capable of overpowering him with force, Harry automatically resorted to words.

"How exactly has Snape here betrayed you? You were entrapped in a diary over 50 years ago, before he was born, and killed before you could escape, so you couldn't ever have interacted with him the way your older self did."

The brown eyes flashed a menacing red and a sudden flash of excruciating pain ripped through Harry's scar. "Foolish boy, do you think that the veil is enough to keep Lord Voldemort, the greatest wizard alive, away on this of all days?"

Was there some connection between this memory of Voldemort and the Voldemort who was alive? Harry's mind put that thought aside for contemplation in the future. Right now, he had more important things to deal with.

"We've had this discussion before, Tom," Harry said with a scoff. "Albus Dumbledore is the greatest wizard alive, not you. I mean, how great can you be if Snape here has been lying to you for years and you never realized?"

"Proclaiming loyalty to Dumbledore in the hopes that he will send his wretched songbird to you again, Harry Potter? Not even phoenix tears will save you tonight. Crucio." Voldemort's long-fingered hand extended toward Harry leaving him to dodge the jet of red light the emanated from his fingers. Harry landed hard on the ground next to Snape and he knew he would be unable to dodge the next spell from this position.

"Crucio!" Voldemort cast again, but this time the curse dissipated inches from Harry's chest.

"Losing your touch, Tom?"

In front of him Snape hissed, "Potter, have you lost your mind?"

"Avada Kadavra!" the enraged Voldemort shouted. Snape reacted before Harry could, yanking Harry down interpose himself between Harry and Voldemort. Harry flinched as the green light approached, but this spell scattered just as the other had.

Looking up from his prone position, Harry saw Sirius and both his parents behind the magical barrier. He smiled at the expressions on their faces. "I think you should take a look over there," Harry said, pointing behind Voldemort to where James Potter stood, arms crossed and looking ineffably smug. "You may have moved him, but he is still the judge."

Voldemort snarled in rage before vanishing with a crack.

Harry made to rise, but Snape caught his arm and pulled him back down. "He's still here. Look at the barrier."

There were spells that did not need the presence of their caster to stay active, Harry knew, but before he could suggest that was the case here he was seized by a red-eyed serpent, bound in coils of pain, and controlled by its will.

"The judge may have prevented me from harming you, but he has no power over the boy. Will you kill me, Severus, before I kill you?"

No…he could not let the creature force him to harm Snape. He had entered the circle to save him, not to kill him. Harry struggled against the pain, fighting to remember how he had escaped the creature at the ministry, but as his mind grasped at the edges of the thought, the creature tightened its coils. Images that were not his own flashed through his mind and then there was nothing but pain and the creature that was bound around him so tightly that they were as one.

No light reached his eyes, for the red-eyes of the serpent stole all the light before it reached him. The only sounds he heard were the thoughts of the creature as it used his mouth to speak. His muscles felt as though they had been pierced by a thousand needles; his lungs were on fire as the agony suffocated him, but through the haze of pain he felt his arms move. His hands were clenching around flesh…a neck?

"Will you not even fight back? Kill me Severus. Kill the boy and you will be free. I will even grant you a swift death."

Yes, please, Snape. Kill me and end the pain.

The coils around him tightened further and Harry wondered that his ribs had not broken from the pressure. And then there was light. His eyes had been freed to look at the face of his professor. He saw his own hands tightening around Snape's neck as the man put up not even a token resistance.

"You won't fight back? Won't you beg for mercy from Lord Voldemort?" The creature used Harry's mouth to say.

Snape was not a nice man, but as he watched his professor accept death rather than harm him it occurred to Harry that despite Snape's faults (and they were many) he might just be a good man. Something within Harry shifted. He could not say that he liked Snape, but a sense of admiration and respect bloomed within him.

The creature hissed in pain and loosened its grip on him. Though it did not release Harry completely, he managed to wrest some control back of his body. Enough, at least, to remove his hands from around Snape's neck before it reasserted control.

The professor took a gasping breath, not breaking eye contact with Harry. "You have your mother's eyes," he rasped.

His mother. Both his parents and Sirius were standing behind the barrier watching him. Helpless to save him. His heart flooded with love for his family and as the emotion swelled the creature's control over him waned. The pain lessened then vanished, and Harry, no longer supported by the will of the serpent, collapsed into his professor, knocking them both to the floor.

All at once there was a cacophony of voices and running feet.

"Harry? Harry, are you alright?" somebody was speaking, but he was barely paying attention. It took nearly all his concentration to fight against unconsciousness. There was something he had to do…somebody he had to help. Nearby he heard a voice…his father, he thought…asking Snape if he was well.

"Harry?"

It took more effort than it should have, but he managed to turn his head just enough to see the woman kneeling at his side. A woman with red hair and bright green eyes.

He managed a small smile, "I'm alright, mum."

And then he let the darkness sweep him away.